Fall in Attitude of DBD Player Base
Hey, just general opinions.
for record I would say I’m middle/average MMR. Almost 2500 hours across steam & Xbox. I play both K&S - about 40%K, 60%S
I’ve recently noticed a drastic change in the play style and attitudes of the DBD player base and just wanted to know if anyone has also or are you also part of the change and if so, why?
Camping & Tunnelling early game:
this has grown SOOO much. It’s become a regular when I play solo or with friends that 3 out of 5 games (even in a row) that the killer either Camps and tunnels from 5 gens or just hardcore pure tunnel vision tunnels. Even to leave current chase with an injured survivor to cross the map back to the unhooked (I know where they come from because of coms with friends) this is now more than the average game. It’s like it’s the go to strategy. Currently in game there is nothing (let’s be real) that can be done to stop this.
Survivors:
First down = DC or
First Hook = Kill themselves.
this was always somewhat of an issue, NOW it is everywhere in Solo Q. Bots are useless. They can’t even hit hook skillchecks (######### is up with that?!)
both sides have become anti-fun.
For me it’s worse as a Survivor. With all the nerfs over the last 18 months, (K base buffs, DS nerf, dead hard destruction, gen speed nerfs, flashlight nerfs, healing nerfs etc…) plus on top of the rise in C&T it just leads to boring, none rewarding game play.
literally none rewarding. If a killer doesn’t get a 4K, he atleast gets some BP. If a S is camped & tunneled at 5 gens, offerings, items & addons wasted, no BP, depip. Killers are not punished the same for losing so a S still gets the punishment in their actual game not just their gameplay.
Even the recent 7 Anniversary Event. Camping and Tunnelling was almost EVERY MATCH!
My issue and question is that this is not BHVR. This is the player base. I just want to know why? What happened? Does anyone else agree? Have you experienced this or have you also done this? No judgement if you have, just for information I’m curious as to why?
what’s happened?
Comments
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Every major update since 6.1.0 forced both sides to streamline their play.
I don't see the devs have a vision for the game and just doctor around symptoms they created themselves in the past.
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Its all been downhill ever science the billy nerf IMO
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"Doctor around symptoms they created themselves" damn that was so well-spoken and summarizes a lot. 👏🏼
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What's funny is that they incentivize both sides to approach the game more competitively, but they still refuse to provide the infrastructure for that. It's still luck of the draw whether all 4 teammates will know what to do against a hard facecamping and tunneling killer, or even have half the experience level of their teammates. If they want us to be competitive, give us the matchmaking consistency and reason to sweat it out. Players have repeatedly given feedback that it's not rewarding sweat your tail off for an invisible number or lose, and they cover their ears and say "la la la la split playerbase".
To OP's point, a lot of this has to do with how hopeless a 3v1 is for the survivors and how easy it is to turn the game into a 3v1 early for the killer. A killer has to be wildly incompetent to lose a 3v1 at 2+ gens. And it's not that hard to get a 3v1 considering how little OTR and DS actually mitigate, assuming a survivor even has them.
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Further on that nobody runs DS now that they can’t use it as a free win in end game and OTR is massively overshadowed by MFT
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I don't necessarily see MFT as a replacement for OTR. My main issues with DS and OTR are the deactivation conditions. They're fine if I'm being tunneled right off the hook. But they do nothing if I touch a gen for 5 seconds and then get in another chase. You're either forced to be cautious to the point of inefficiency to preserve the value or you run something else and take your chances. I usually go with MFT+DH+WoO+(something else) and tell myself I'm getting 5 gens out of a hard tunnel.
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This isn’t a playerbase issue, it actually is a Dev issue.
Behavior has done a good job of butchering any perk that is capable of slowing down or stopping a quick loss for both sides. So... both sides are trying to get their quick win before the other side can. Is it fun? No, but expecting either side to not play as efficiently as they can isn’t going to work.
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I dont either but I literally haven’t seen OTR since MFT came out, and nobody’s arguing with you about deactivations, i personally think it should have a 15-30 second timer that builds over time as you do said “conspicuous actions” mainly the problem with ds was that it was a guaranteed escape in end game as you could force the killer to hit you
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BHVR changes perks cause they are used too much
Ruin, Pop, Corrupt, Call Of Brine, Eruption
Some of those were handled wrong (IMO), others could've been done differently
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call of brine + overcharge skullmerchant... I'm still traumatized... 😭
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The answer to a lot of problems in the game is stricter matchmaking. I have played enough of this game to know that the MMR system is far worse than it was in the period after it was first released. People whined about games being too sweaty and Behavior made things less strict to appease these people. People want to win every game but don't actually want to get matched with other sweaty players. I think this approach is unfair to the average player. Somehow the matchmaking seems to have gotten even worse recently. The amount of extreme mismatches I encounter now is far higher than it has ever been in the past. Most big streamers have called this out as well. I don't know what they changed recently but it definitely was a bad change. The matchmaking doesn't need to be extremely strict either. I don't expect people to sit through 20 minute queues for every match. SURELY there is something in between that and what we have now. It would make the game a lot better for 90% of players if the sweats were kept out of the average lobby.
I also think there is a real argument for giving bloodpoints a huge buff across the board. Especially on the survivor side. Veteran players may not care about bloodpoints but they are absolutely essential for new players and casual players. Maybe people wouldn't be so quick to give up if they felt they were actually getting something for the time they invested into a match. I can subjectively say that I didn't see anywhere near as many people ragequitting during the anniversary when people were actually getting bloodpoints for a change. Current survivor progression feels TERRIBLE. We've lost WGLF and Prove Thyself which has significantly cut down on the amount of bloodpoints survivors can earn. There are also more "nothing" games that are over in the first minute due to hook suicides, killers trying to speedrun the 4k, etc. As of right now I don't feel like there is any incentive for a survivor to stay in a game that doesn't seem to be going well. You aren't going to get anything out of it and are better off going next. Playing the game out is more often than not a waste of time. Give people something for their time so they have a reason to stick around.
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How is survivors disconnecting or suiciding on first hook a dev issue, instead of a playerbase issue?
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I get it... I understand it
But the way they handled it was a bit underwhelming
Knocking the regression rates in half (more or less) instead of putting on a cap on regression or a different effect
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some of these people be crazy fr… crazy? I was crazy once, they locked me in a room, a rubber room, a rubber room with rats, the rats made me crazy. crazy? I was crazy once, they locked me in a room, a rubber room, a rubber room with rats, the rats made me crazy.
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Are you ok?
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It's a developer issue because there is no in-game incentive at all as a solo to not first hook suicide. In fact, you're incentivized to die immediately if things don't go your way, in order to rapidly get through tomes/dailies/find people still using cakes. DCing at least has the DC penalty,
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The complete lack of transparency with SBMM has always been really irritating. We can't tell the devs what felt wrong if we can't see what is happening. We can't give actionable feedback that is rooted in data if we can't see anything as it relates to matchmaking (without breaking TOS, of course). It's just really arrogant on the part of the devs. And it's weird to be so arrogant about something that constantly generates negative feedback. It's a great way to avoid accountability though. "This is how it works and it's definitely working. Source: trust me."
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The real issue is everyone is wearing these “DBD tinted glasses”
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For me: I don't want every player to rush me with resilience and made for this....
I play pig.
I rarely tunnel, because it hurts my power. I camp a lot though. Problem is, what else is there. If you don't play a strong killer, you are screwed in the current meta. Maps that have always been a core problem are even worse with survivors moving faster. Gens also get done faster. I can totally understand that killers try to finish the match when they have the chance. Survivors do the same.
I agree with you. Both sides are very unfun right now.
Only exception is 4man swf, where you can relax.
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Playing the game normally isn´t an incentive?
There is no perfect match. Where you get the best teammates, offerings, map, pallet spawns and the killer you like going against the most. So why do people still attempt to get the perfect combination? It makes 0 sense to me.
For example, earlier today i had a match as Huntress against a 4 man SWF. 3 of them were prestige 100 and the last one 69. I played with a meme build and one of them still suicided. They were all streamers. So i entered the twitch channel of one of them after the match. Turns out the next match they got a hacker. In order to report they stopped the stream to get access to the vod. So curious me, i watched the vod of my match with them and ohh man, they really weren´t short on insults for absolutely no reason at all. Like i played chill and even ate some blast mines, and their comments were insults and smack talking, even when they were losing. Fast forward, the next match they got after the hacker was a Huntress that let them bleed out at 5 gens.
So instead of having a chill match against a Agitation + Iron Grip Huntress, they preferred to suicide to go against sweaty players.
Moral of the story is, that sometimes its better to play your cards and have some fun. Instead of hoping for the perfect hand, while feeling miserable.
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I think the decline started with “the skull merchant”
Mainly because everybody was disappointed in the mori, character design, and perks, and hostage holding matches has caused people to be really on edge ever since.
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So for whatever it's worth, and if it helps any: Over the past year or so(been playing since 2018, PS4 and PC), I've found myself with long periods of DBD play, punctuated by long breaks...a month or more. I come back from a break, and a couple of months later, I realize why I took a break, and go on another one.
Last time I returned about three weeks ago, it only took me a week and a half to remember why I had put it down last time. The reasons you noted figured largely into it. The game is really no fun to play most of the time anymore. And, I don't know that Alien is going to make a great big difference. Not sure when or if I'll pick it up again really. I'm having more fun playing through the Mass Effect trilogy for the umpteenth time, frankly.
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"May the rats eat your eyes!"
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stunning photo btw 😍
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Simple. Getting camped and tunneled has literally never been fun. However a killer running old BBQ and Pop or Ruin wasn't nearly as likely to do it. Which means that any given survivor is much less likely to have it happen *again*, get fed up, and then DC or kill themselves on hook.
Also they had a much stronger version of DS which did an OK job of forcing it to stop temporarily.
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Correct. The game itself is not an incentive. An incentive is a reward or avoidance of punishment. You are not rewarded for sticking out a losing match, and there is no punishment to avoid besides a short queue time.
The provided in-game goals for players of DBD are to grind endlessly to 1. get all perks on all characters to tier 3; 2. get through the battlepass for the cosmetics. Making the Korean MMO style grind more efficient matters to people, and one-hook suiciding is a tool that gets you to favorable grinding conditions faster.
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I'll reiterate what I've said in threads past, because I truly believe it to be the problem:
People cry out for more balance but the reality is, the more we "balance" a game that was inherently based on an imbalanced premise to begin with, the more we're going to see matches where one side dominates the minute the other makes a single mistake. And this leads to more people being frustrated and less fun in the game itself.
This is the direct result of people caring too much about "balance" in a game that was fun BECAUSE of all the ridiculous things both sides could do. OP perks/mechanics/add-ons/etc in the past were definitely "unbalanced", but matches felt like they had a lot more stakes to them, or that they could change at any time, because either side could use these to swing the match in their favor.
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I agree with this so much and also have been saying this. Everyone wants balance - until they see how boring, predictable and unfun it is. I want old 5 tótem ruin back.
I’ve NEVER cared about dying - I care about the match. I want to have fun.
im also convinced that the rise of the likes of Otz and compatible “optimal play by subtracting 60% of 3 gens plus Dead Man’s” type streamers has made this game so dry and sweaty.
I Guess my real issue is all matches are turning into and Otz trial when all I was looking for was a JRM / Yerv trial like I used to enjoy.
if the result is that the player base has just changed and that’s it, then pub DBD matches are just not for me.
Me and my friends are the type to spawn into Midwitch with an anti hooking Head On / Exponential built. WE WILL ALL DIE. We will NOT escape. No gen will be touched. We’re just after some head on stuns and hook sabos. It always leads to a 4K for the K and we’re all essentially bled out once the Boon carrier dies, but it’s the best fun.
Winning is fun when it happens. But it’s not why I spawn in - so stop camping and tunnelling ME!!!!!
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crazy? I was crazy once, they locked me in a room, a rubber room, a rubber room with rats, the rats made me crazy. crazy? I was crazy once, they locked me in a room, a rubber room, a rubber room with rats, the rats made me crazy. crazy? I was crazy once, they locked me in a room, a rubber room, a rubber room with rats, the rats made me crazy.crazy? I was crazy once, they locked me in a room, a rubber room, a rubber room with rats, the rats made me crazy. crazy? I was crazy once, they locked me in a room, a rubber room, a rubber room with rats, the rats made me crazy. crazy? I was crazy once, they locked me in a room, a rubber room, a rubber room with rats, the rats made me crazy. crazy? I was crazy once, they locked me in a room, a rubber room, a rubber room with rats, the rats made me crazy.crazy? I was crazy once, they locked me in a room, a rubber room, a rubber room with rats, the rats made me crazy. crazy? I was crazy once, they locked me in a room, a rubber room, a rubber room with rats, the rats made me crazy. crazy? I was crazy once, they locked me in a room, a rubber room, a rubber room with rats, the rats made me crazy.
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I get what you're saying, but I think it's actually caused by the opposite of striving for balance. One sided dominance is indicative of a lack of balance. Either side in this game is still capable of completely blowing away the other side with a loadout if the other side doesn't bring an equivalent busted loadout. That hasn't changed and that has always been the case with DbD. The power spike is just lessened to a degree.
For everyone one person who thinks unbalanced things lead to fun outcomes and random swings, you're going to have another person who thinks those things are cheap and unfun. The biggest mistake asymm developers and communities make is thinking their games are somehow unique and that the problems of other PVP games don't apply to them. There are always going to be two types of gamers: casual and competitive. Everyone is on a spectrum between those two ends. Casual players can't fathom that competitive players find the fun in competition, and competitive players can't fathom that casual players don't care about winning (a point of contention with me, because why would they care if people sweat then). ANYWAY...
Asymm developers need to stop throwing everyone into the same pool and hoping gamers will all just get along. It's not going to happen. Almost every other game out there tries to split the playerbase as best they can between casuals and sweats. Asymm developers think they're unique and don't need to do that. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy sometimes. Your playerbase can't support the split queue because you don't offer it in the first place.
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There isn’t a competitor huge enough to compete with dbd on a long term basis. That gives the devs free reign to do whatever they want because they know people will come back to their game. The choice they have made is to appeal to both sides to get money from as much people as possible. Why else would they keep insisting on pushing out new content non stop every year instead of taking a few months to focus on game balance?
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Many things said in this thread are correct, but this is key/critical.
BHVR knows their game is old. It's gone far too long without any real optimization to even be capable of doing so at this point with the buggy spaghetti code they have now, so upgrading the code to even a new engine is not possible. I feel bad for the console players who keep asking for optimizations and fixes that'll never happen because BHVR can't even get the game to run correctly on PC, which has a lot more flexibility/forgiveness. They'll just stack band-aids on top of band-aids till it kinda works the way they want.
They know they have at least a minor cash cow due to the game's uniqueness and lack of competition, so they're not interested in spending any time or money making any significant changes or upgrades. They know they can churn out recolored cosmetics and new killers and survivors with rehashed or combined existing powers/perk abilities and players will eat it up. They introduced FOMO not too far back and moved sections of their existing store items to be seasonal to drive sales further.
This is maintenance mode for them. They have no incentive to do anything differently. They can do this virtually indefinitely, until they run out of companies that will license IPs to them or the game code collapses under the weight of it's own jank.
I just wish more competitors and companies with desirable IPs realized this. BHVR would have to get off their asses if real competition showed up or they started losing/not getting licenses. Either that or they'd be inclined to sell the game to another company with hopefully better infrastructure and intentions to renovate it or rebuild it into something more modern and enjoyable.
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Isn´t it ironic that those exact perks were often the target of nerf threads?
But yes, i kinda agree that killers had less reason to camp with those perks.
I even give you another one: Undying Ruin was the healthiest slowdown combo we ever had. Killers that ran it had to constantly switch targets. Which means no camping or tunneling. Yet we had tons of threads that asked for a nerf and the devs finally gave in.
People really should be more careful what they wish for.
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Having fun? No? Not an incentive?
If someone doesn´t has fun with the game and constantly dcs/suicides. Then it would be best to take a break. No harm in that. Just take your time, play something else (i heard civ is a great game) and come back after a few months with new energy.
Its better than constantly ruining the game for everyone else.
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You've missed my point, which is that there is no objective mechanical reason for solos to not hook suicide. "Fun" is subjective and is not a factor.
Perhaps you should consider Civilization 5 yourself. You look like you could use a break from the forums at least.
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So playing a game for fun is not a reason?
Then why play in the first place? Just to ruin everyone elses fun?
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People ragequit when they aren't having fun. Some amount of DCs/AFKs/kobe attempts are always going to happen, but if it happens at a greater frequency in specific scenarios, those scenarios are likely the root cause.
I've seen people hard DC/AFK/kobe attempt at a 300 latency Huntress hatchet hitting them around a corner/through a wall, Skull Merchant, Nurse, Wesker getting the bugged grab instead of slap at vaults twice in a row (which is fixed now), being facecamped, getting flashlight saved 5 times in succession, going down because they hid in a corner against an instadown Killer, and more. Most of these can't be fixed by players, but can be fixed (or have been fixed) by devs. A small percentage of these DCs are strictly 'skill issue' DCs, aka the consecutive saves/failed stealth.
Also these conditions aren't necessarily overlapping. The person who DCs at being facecamped may be willing to play the Skull Merchant game, and the person who DCs from lag may be fine with playing against Nurse.
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I stopped reading at "dead hard destruction".
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Then your most likely part of the problem - with no intention of moving forward.
just stay camping dude 👍🏻
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2500 hours and you think dead hard was OK and now is destroyed (even if the perk is still played both in pubs and comp).
Maybe in another 2500 hours you will have some clarity.
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I get what you're saying, but it does the devs (or the community really) no good to stick their head in the sand and pretend they can't see the spike in DCs/suicides.
We can debate all day about the ethics/maturity/etc of doing such things, but when there's a clear increase in it happening, the only productive solution is to look at why it happens more often, not just simply speak in platitudes about "taking a break" or "ruining the game."
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My Problem is that BHVR seems to want to limit what types of counter play which makes the game very, very, stale.
It feels like both sides have had their toy boxes stripped down, so it only encourages a very, very rigid of play style.
A big part of the problem is new perks accidently creating toxic synergies with older perks that become too strong on either side.
Example Pain Res and DMS. (Before the adjustment to Scorge Hooks)
Or Eruption and Call of Brine (You can't just remove someone from the game for 30 second).
Or Now: MFT and Hope.
What they need to do is evaluate the perk system and create perk types. Example: "Eruption is Gen Slow Down" or MFR and Hope is "Player Speed". If they would create a perk point system that prevents a player from assigning all value High Value Perks at once, then the problem is solved. This way they can continue to make new perks and them just limiting some of the build outs.
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Honestly it's just entitlement.
Players of DBD have just gotten so entitled over the years and no matter how much the devs change based on feedback, people will just never be happy unless the game goes exactly the way they want it to go.
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Exactly!
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I agree to a point, some of the old ######### was so broken it was insane (insta blinds, pallet vacuum, insta heals, infinites) I think most old perk mechanics should come back but some stuff was just too far (like killer being able to stand in front of a hook and survivors being physically unable to save them)
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But how do people know that they are not having fun, when they literally suicide on their first down/hook?
I understand that certain situations can be frustrating. But i´ve seen so many people rage quit for no aparrent reason that it baffles me. Getting a full match where someone doesn´t rage quit or someone doesn´t get tunneled seems to be rare. I´m seeing this both as survivor and killer. When i go out of my way to not tunnel and yet. Survivors rage quit. I go with suboptimal builds. No slowdown. Just Agitation, Iron Grip, Mad Grit and Lightborn on a Huntress. A slow killer.
I just don´t understand it.
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I´m not sure the devs can identify a rage quit suicide from a normal kill. So with that in mind, all those rage quits must look like legit kills on the devs stats. Which means that if survivors were playing normal, the kill rates would be much lower.
On the why, it totally beats me. There is currently no annoying or OP killer combo that would even remotely justify so many people being mad. Or at least i don´t see many nerf threads for killer perks. So maybe its boredom. Or people want to lower their mmr rating. Totally beats me.
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DH was a pretty simple perk and almost laughable to dodge on its first endurance nerf. It really wasn’t an “issue” - it was just popular. Popular doesn’t equal OP. Would you call Wesker OP?
ps. Hours don’t equal skill… clearly
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But the issue with this is they’re essentially controlling your game even worse by saying “these are available to you but no” that to me is in line with the proposed EGC Mori that just plays the game for you and removes your choices. Which is the reason why I loved this game.
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It also prevents broken builds from being abused and would allow behavior to try more creative perks without them having to working about unforeseen problematic combinations when creating a new chapter. Other games do this to avoid broken combos.
The more chapters there are the more this becomes a problem. I would have this rather than something gets nerfed to where its unusable and creates more blood web bloat. The root causes of these issues are not the perk itself but the combinations which tilts game mechanic.
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